Xabi Alonso asked for patience after one of the most difficult nights of his early Chelsea reign, but his post-match assessment made clear how many issues he believes remain unresolved.<\/p>\n
Speaking after the loss at the Gtech Community Stadium, Alonso admitted that Chelsea have lost consistency and have yet to produce a full 90 minutes that he can trust. He said the side has struggled to sustain performance either within matches or from one weekend to the next, and that against Brentford they never established a spell in control.<\/p>\n
The game itself was tight for an hour, with both teams pressing forward quickly after turnovers and then giving the ball back. Once Brentford scored, Chelsea collapsed badly. Alonso pointed first to mentality, saying: \u201cWe have dropped our consistency,\u201d and adding that there was a lack of the \u201ccompetitive mentality needed in the second half\u201d from his side.<\/p>\n
He also accepted that set-piece defending remains a problem, though he stressed it is only one part of a wider picture. Since the start of last season, Chelsea have conceded 22 set-piece goals, more than any other Premier League team.<\/p>\n
Alonso also highlighted duels and ball progression as areas that need work. On the day, Chelsea actually came out well in the physical contests, winning 59% of ground duels and 53% in the air, but that did not translate into control. With the ball, Chelsea were slow and flat, and their 116 passes between Henderson and Barco never led into Brentford\u2019s box.<\/p>\n
The lack of threat became even more obvious after Chelsea fell behind in the 61st minute. They finished with 80% possession across the final half-hour, yet did not force a save from Caoimhin Kelleher.<\/p>\n
Alonso said the team must learn how to hold shape when under pressure, and Chelsea\u2019s failure in rest defense was underlined by Brentford\u2019s second goal. Alonso said it was an area he had already worked on with the squad before the visit to Hounslow.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Alonso warned Chelsea need patience after a Brentford loss exposed their consistency, mentality and control.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":19793,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[190,172],"tags":[1836,1162,180],"class_list":["post-19794","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-chelsea","category-epl","tag-2026-27-premier-league","tag-analytics","tag-player-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19794","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19794"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19794\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19793"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19794"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19794"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19794"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}